


Tharcian

by LBarnes737



Category: Original Work
Genre: F/M, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-09-07
Updated: 2019-09-07
Packaged: 2020-10-11 11:33:46
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 655
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20545469
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LBarnes737/pseuds/LBarnes737
Summary: Snipets from a story going around my head right now. Essentially:Llyr hates his sister, and de facto queen, Onora. His older brother, Jord, seems to worship the ground she walks on, and their father is so stuck in his own head that half the time he simply isn't aware enough to understand how tyrannical she truly is. The only sensible member of his family is his oldest brother, Kien, but he hasn't seen him in 5 years, ever since their sister all but banished him and Jord to the main continent.Now, Llyr is finally coming home to Tharcian but once back home Llyr begins to feel a strong attraction to the ocean surrounding his island home, much to the anger of his sister, which only becomes greater when he meets Ankara, a selkie woman who starts to show him a side of his heritage he was never allowed to explore.But is Onora really as tyrannical as she seems or is there something darker at play? Not all history should be known and some secrets are better of buried and forgotten.





	Tharcian

**Author's Note:**

> Your Highness = Anyone of royal blood  
Your Majesty = The ruling Monarch (i.e. the King or Queen)
> 
> This is not Beta'd.

Her highness stood there with her back to him, the moonlight caressing the curves of her shoulders as it melted into the folds of her dark hair. Her shoulders were sagged, head tilted slightly back and her hands open by her sides as if in surrender. In that moment, with her hair loose and staring across the black water, Gudrun was stunned by how vulnerable she appeared. How unassuming. This young woman, who had fought monsters, commanded fleets, and faced down her peoples most hated enemies, in this moment allowed a sleeping world a glimpse of the girl she could have been. It was such a private, even intimate, moment that he was forced to look away, head bowed and eyes closed.

Silence hung between them and for some time Gudrun was unsure whether she had noticed his arrival.

“You found me, captain.” Her voice was soft, resigned, and cut through the silence like an oar through water. A lesser man would have jumped, but Gudrun was not such a man. Instead he fell to one knee, his captains cloak settling heavily over him. A servant bowing to his monarch.

“Your Highness.”

“Did you need something?”

**_Answers._ **But his true reason for seeking her out would not be appropriate for his station so he fell back on a more familiar truth. “I was concerned for your safety.”

Her Highness breathed out sharply through her nose in amused disbelief. “Of course, you were. My most loyal friend.” There was fondness in her tone and something else that sounded so much like defeat that it tore at Gudrun’s chest.

Silence fell again and both allowed it to wrap around them comfortably and heavy with unspoken words. There was so much Gudrun didn’t understand. He wanted to beg her for answers, to shake her and beat her until she told him why she had done this, to fall to his knees and beg until she had changed her mind. He did none of these things. He simply waited with her, his head bowed, as the moon crossed the sky overhead.

“Captain?”

“Yes, your Highness?”

Her voice was soft and trembled as she spoke, “would you tell me you love me?”

Gudrun’s head jerked up in shock. “Your Highness-“, he started in protest, but he cut himself off as he caught sight of her back. Her muscles weren't tense like he had expected. Someone anticipating a rejection of their affections would have, so why?

Because she wasn't saying she loved him, he realised, and she wasn't asking him to love her. Not once in all his 15 years at her side had he ever seen her allow herself to become romantically entangled. And now, by her own doing, she had snatched all possibility of love out from under her feet. She knew he didn't love her, that uttering those words would be a lie, and, at the end, she had asked him anyway. 

He took a deep breath.

"I love you".

The words were too loud, his tone too reverend but he said them with as much feeling as he could muster, even as the lie weigh heavy on his tongue. Perhaps it was because of this that the next words fell unbidden from his lips.

“Your Majesty”.

Her Highness inhaled sharply, her shoulders tensing at the words, but even as Gudrun bowed his head, waiting to be berated, to be punished, he could not regret those two words. Because even as he had uttered them he had felt the truth of them. Just saying them could be considered treason, the newly crowned king asleep barely a mile away. But Gudrun knew then, even as that fact hung over him, that this girl, this woman, would forever be his only queen.

And he loved his queen.

He silently awaited his punishment. Instead, beneath the gold glare of the stars, in barely a whisper, her highness simply murmured:

“thank you”.


End file.
